Looking Beyond the Text - Books and their bindings

Thursday, 17 March 2016

Desecration and Doodles

One of the great treasures here in Lampeter is a
copy of the Golden Legend printed in
1498 at the Red Pale in Westminster by Wynkyn de Worde. The Red Pale was William Caxton’s printing press, the earliest press to be established in England and this book is a later printing of one that Caxton and de Worde produced in collaboration.Caxton translated the text of the Golden
Legend from Jacobus de Voragine’s original Latin text, and Wynkyn de Worde put the whole thing together, providing the woodcuts that adorn the book and make this the
most profusely illustrated of all English Incunabula. Typically for a Caxton and de Worde collaboration, printed after Caxton's death on his press, Wynkyn de Worde gives a nod to his deceased master, but using his printer's mark (below).

The Golden
Legend is a hagiographical work, a compilation of stories and legends
relating to the saints. Within the book the saint’s
biographies are laid out in the order that they occur during the course of the
liturgical year. Generally speaking
each saint is given an accompanying woodcut by de Worde, though some of these
are generic and are repeated many times within the book.

As you go through the text, you find that two of the
entries for individual saints have been defaced, they have been carefully, but
deliberately crossed through with repeated strokes of a quill pen. The first is the entry for St Thomas of Canterbury (St Thomas Becket),
the second that of Winchester’s bishop-saint, St Swithun (above and below).

The cults of both saints were suppressed and
their shrines demolished in early 1538 and this treatment of a text relating to
them, particularly to Becket, is not that uncommon. As an aside the woodcut that Wynkyn de Worde
has used to accompany Becket’s entry is not an image of Thomas Becket at all,
but is an image of the Mass of St Gregory, with Pope St Gregory kneeling in
front of an altar on which is appearing the body of Christ. You can tell it’s him, because one of the
clerics beside him holds a papal tiara.

As you continue to look through the book, it is
evident that only Swithun and Thomas Becket have been singled out for this
treatment and that other English saints that were the focus of prominent cults
in the Middle Ages have been spared. St
Erkenwald (above), the Bishop of London whose shrine was in St Paul’s Cathedral is left
unscathed; as is St Edmund, the king-martyr, whose shrine at St Edmundsbury in
Suffolk was a focus of royal patronage.
Even St Alban, the protomartyr of England escape. All where prominent late medieval cults and
each saints had a shrine destroyed in the late 1530s, so its baffling that they escape the stroke of the reforming quill. Most baffling of all is the treatment of the
entry that follows that of St Swithun. It
is the feast of the translation of St Thomas Becket’s bones and it has also been
spared, despite Becket’s principal feast being crossed out. What a half-hearted attempt at iconoclasm
this is!

Turning aside for a minute from this ‘iconoclasm’,
as you make your way through this extraordinary book, there are various pieces
of graffiti that pop out from the margins, all drawn in ink. At the bottom of one page are a couple of profile
heads both with Tudor bonnets with feathers in their top, one wearing a ruff.

At the bottom of another page is the head of
a man similarly dressed and smoking what appears to be a clay pipe and on the top of another page is a profile head of a woman. They must be late
sixteenth century, is it beyond the bounds of possibility that they were doodled by the hand that held the reforming pen?

The early printing press - The Praelum Ascensianum

I think I can allow myself a little bit of a digression on this blog from binding, into the extraordinary world of bibliography, as we take a look at the frontispiece of this splendid early printed book. This book is an edition of Livy's History of Rome and was published in Paris in 1516. It was published as a joint enterprise by the two major Parisian printers of the age: Jehan Petit (who was using the alias Joanne Paruo) and Jodocus van Ashe Badius. Although they jointly funded the printing of this book and as the title page suggests they sold the book in both of their respective shops, the Colophon of the book makes it clear that the book was printed by Badius in his print shop which was called the Praelum Ascensianum - the Ascension Press. In a wonderful bit of marketing in the book's Colophon, Petit and Badius claim that this particular book was a new improved edition of Livy's History and was the most accurate available to the academics of Paris! Now we say that Petit and Badius were printer's, but they were not press men, they wouldn't have got their hands dirty. They were print shop proprietors, speculators, Publishers if you like. It seems that Both Petit and Badius, Badius particularly, were men of considerable intellect and learning (see sources below), who were quite capable of producing accurate texts of important Classical works.

The title page of this book is wonderful, full of detail and full of meaning The text is set within a lovely little classical structure with pilasters and profile heads in medallions hanging from them, evoking the architecture of Ancient Rome. Around the classical frame are lots of marginal details: Renaissance Putti, suits of armour eluding to the martial history of the Roman Emperors and various mythical creatures. At the top is a man in a roundel flanked by two lions, busy writing away at a book on a lectern - is this Livy himself? This particular wood engraved surround is used in other printed works coming off the presses of Petit and Badius. Here is an example from another of their collaborations, it has at it's centre the printer's mark of Petit and was printed at his press rather than that of Badius. So clearly the two men were sharing their resources when there was call to do so.

Back to the Lampeter copy of Livy's History and on the frontispiece of this collaboration the printer's mark this time is that of Badius. It's a wonderful representation of the interior of Badius' print shop the Praelum Ascensianum. At the centre of the image is the very printing press that this book was printed on, with the name of the print shop clearly printed in red upon it. At the bottom is the monogram of Badius: A(VA)B - for Jodocus van Asche Badius.

There's lots going on in this image and we can learn a lot from it about the process that went into producing a book like Livy's History. As I said the press is in the middle, it's a wooden press with a wooden screw mechanism. The press man is on the right hand side of the press. With his right arm he is he pulling the handle, that will turn the screw, that will apply pressure to the 'platten', which will 'press' the inked type onto the paper. With his left hand he is about to turn the 'rounce' the handle that is connected to a windlass, that operates the 'bed' of the press, or as they called in the sixteenth century the 'coffin'. This 'coffin' contains the 'form' into which the cast metal type (the letters) is set and over this is placed the 'tympam' which contains the paper that is to be printed. The man behind the press man is his assistant and he is holding in his hand two ink balls. These ink balls have wooden handles and are made of leather stuffed with wool and are used to spread the ink evenly on the metal type. When the press man draws out the 'coffin' and as he removes the newly printed piece of paper, the assistant jumps in quickly, inks the type using the balls, before another piece of paper is put in and the press is pulled again. Having two men working the press, a press man and an assistant, significantly increased the output of the press.

Now on the right of the press is another man, he is seated on a bench; he is the typesetter or compositor. In his right hand he has a composing stick and with this left hand he is reaching out to pick out the metal type, the individual metal letters. He transfers the metal type into the stick in readiness for its transferal to the form. Notice how his eyes are focused not on the type or the stick, but on the piece of text that hung up in front of him, this is the proof text he is copying. An experienced compositor would be able to set type without looking down at the trays containing it. For Petit and Badius, the accuracy of the texts they were producing for the French academic market were clearly an important selling point. The accuracy of the text was in the hands of the skilled type compositor and the clarity of the printed text in the hands of the skilled press man.

Prologue.
Bringing the Blog back on track for a minute, the volume is an a nice early sixteenth century binding of blind-tooled Calf over wooden boards and with the remains of gorgeous metal clasps.

What a fine little book this is, printed in 1675, it's still in its contemporary trade binding and is almost as crisp as the day it was printed and bound. The leather binding is red 'Morocco' Goatskin, with elaborate gold tooling and is typical of the period. After a generation of Puritan influence, with the Restoration in 1660 and Charles II's return to England from his exile in France, the English embraced all things French, particularly the prevailing French Baroque style. All areas of the visual arts where influenced by this new French style, bookbinding included and you can see that in this binding.

The richness of the exterior of this book is continued when the book is opened. The pastedowns to the front and back are made from decorated marbled paper, which has beautiful swirling and serrated patterns in red, yellow ochre and Cobalt blue paint. This marbled paper is decorated using a technique that originated in the near East and came to Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The 'marbled' papers used in the English bookbinding trade from the 1660s, were not produced in England, but primarily in Holland and northern France and were imported into London. The pattern used here is a pattern that is known in England as 'Antique Dutch', indicating its continental origins. The use of marbled paper in late seventeenth century English bindings was an embellishment that was as exotic and as Continental as the fashion for gentlemen wearing full bottomed periwigs.

Making marbled paper is a complex and skilled craft and there are many variables that can go wrong. Believe me I've made it and have many sheets of badly printed marbled paper to prove it! You begin the process by filling a large shallow tray with a size made from soaking and boiling up Carageenan moss. You mix up your chosen colours using water based paint, to which is added a drop or two of Ox Gall. The Ox Gall is an agent that enables the paint to spread on the surface of the size when it's dropped on it.

My marbling tray with rather murky looking size after completing a significant amount of marbling.

The pigment is then dropped or sprinkled on to the surface of the size with a brush or a feather and will then spread out over the size. Put too much Ox Gall in and it spreads too much, put in too little and the paint sinks! Once the different colours are applied to the surface you can begin to create a pattern. This can be produced by running the point of a stick through the paint to create swirls and curls, but to create the serrated patterns typical of the 'Antique Dutch' used in Bur. 03005, a special marbling comb must be used. This comb is a wooden frame which contains a series of teeth made from wire and these are drawn through the size to create the pattern. When the pattern is complete, a piece of paper treated with Alum is carefully laid on the top of the size and this then picks up the pigment. Without this Alum treatment the paint won't be 'mordanted' to the paper and it just falls right off. The paper is then rinsed and left to dry.

The illustration above from a book entitled The Laboratory printed in 1740, shows the tools used in the process. To the left are the pots of paint with the feathers used to drop the paint onto the size. The bath of size is in the middle and the paint has already been dropped onto the surface of the size, there are a series of light coloured droplets and a darker snake like band of paint. Above is the comb ready to be applied to the surface to make the 'Antique Dutch' pattern. Generally speaking once the paper was dry it was given a waxy coating, that gives it durability and could then be used by the bookbinder. The paper in Bur. 03005 has been treated in that way.

Eventually this technique caught on in England and by the middle of the eighteenth century there were marbling workshops in London producing English marbled paper. Gradually a whole range of different patterns and forms developed and I may well illustrate some of these in a later post.

Below is a video on Youtube that shows marbling taking place in the 1970s in the studios of the Cambridge bookbinder Cockerell's. It gives you a good sense of just how involved this extraordinary process is.

These books are a set of five volumes of the Emperor Justinian’s ‘Corpus Juris’ and were printed in Lyon in 1551. This was a standard work of Roman Jurisprudence, which influenced both Canon and Civil Law from the middle of the sixteenth century.

The five volumes were imported into England and were bound uniformally not long after printing. The bindings are of dark brown Calf and are tooled in blind, panelled into four concentric rectangles with a fillet of a thick and two thin lines. A roll decorated with an arabesque pattern, has been run around the second and third rectangles. A single and a double line fillet are used to decorate the otherwise plain spines. The binding is a typical product of the Oxford binderies of the sixteenth century.[1]

All five volumes are in poor condition and are kept in conservation boxes. In the case of two of the volumes the covers have become detached from the text block and these give a rare and valuable view of the underlying binding structure of the books.

The books are straightforwardly but robustly bound, as you would expect from a set of text books used by scholars. As is typical for the book of this date, the quires are sewn onto split leather thongs that are let into wooden boards. The spine has been glued, but not lined.

When covered with the leather, these split thongs produce the very thick and pronounced raised bands on the spine that are characteristic of a late sixteenth century binding. You can see them on the leather of the spine in the photo below.

The original endbands remain on some of the volumes on the set. Where they exist they are also uniform, worked over a leather thong with alternating blue and white linen thread, which would have been quite bright when the book was first completed.

Again typical of Oxford bindings of this period, the boards of the books are lined with reclaimed manuscript. The front and back pastedowns of all five volumes are formed from sheets of parchment waste, pages from the same medieval manuscript.

The manuscript is a thirteenth century Gloss, a commentary on the Gospel of St John, perhaps the Glossa Ordinaria. On each page the text of the Gospel of St John is in a larger hand, with the glosses, the commentaries on the text placed around them. The glosses are taken primarily from the works of St Augustine of Hippo, but also from Alcuin, St Jerome, St John Chrysostom and St Isidore of Seville.

The page illustrated above shows the text of John 16, verse 23, surrounded by glosses from Alcuin, Augustine and John Chrysostom. Copies of the Glossa Ordinaria where mass produced from the middle of the thirteenth century, they were texts that were in common use within the Universities. [2] It is tempting to see the manuscript waste as a victim of the Reformation, perhaps plunder from the Monasteries. However, it's just as likely that the manuscript was a victim of the development of the print trade. Thousands of medieval manuscripts were flooding the market in the sixteenth century, particularly in University towns, having been replaced by more reliable printed versions of the texts.

There is some tantalising inscriptions in the book that hint at a possible provenance and also might indicate the cost of the set of books at the end of the sixteenth century when newly bound.

Phi 2282 has the inscription on the title page: ‘Johannes Jenour me possidet’‘John Jenour, owns me’ in an early sixteenth century hand – and what appears to be the cost of the set of books ‘iii.li xiii.s …’ (£3 & 13 shillings), a significant sum. The same inscription occurs on the back paste down too, with more text below it, sadly indistinguishable due to water damage.

In the same hand below the title is written twice: ‘Initium sapientiae timor dei’ - ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’. It’s not certain who Jenour was who bought this set of books for the considerable sum of £3 and 13 shillings, but a Johannes Jenour, alias John Jener or John Jeynor was Vicar from 1572-1580 and then Rector of Great Bardfield in Essex from 1580-1616.[3]

This book is one volume of a four volume set of Francois Turpin’s
popular ‘French Plutarch’. This is an
eighteenth century work emulating Plutarch’s Lives and contains the biographies of famous Frenchmen, including
generals, statesmen and lawyers. The four
volumes were issued between 1775 and 1786. At they are bound as a uniform set, probably in the last decade of the eighteenth century.

The binding, which is almost certainly French too, and is very fine indeed and given its rather lavish decoration was probably undertaken for a rich client The
decorative treatment of the leather is visually harmonious. The binding material is Calf, which has been
marbled on the front and back boards.
Gilt tooling has been used in a typical late eighteenth century manner. It is restrained on front and back boards - the only decoration with a narrow roll applied around the edges and corner
and a foliate centre tool applied. The
spine on the other hand has received heavy gold tooling, with the centre tool used on the boards also used at the centre of each compartment.
Red and green patch labels have been applied for the titles, the green
of the leather labels echoing the green tones within the marbling of the Calf. The decoration is harmonious and very, very
elegant.However, all this sense of harmony and elegance vanishes when you look
at the edge treatment of the book. It is quite common to find book edges decorated, either with marbling, a
sprinkled pigment finish, or with solid gilding.

On the edges of this book, the binder has
decided to use two treatments in combination, paste painted decoration and
gilding and the resulting effect is opulent.On both ends of each edge the
binder has created panels of gilding with convex sides and the space in between
has been decorated with swirly patterns created in wet Cobalt blue paste. The gilding is decorated with a line of gauffering. At some point the fore edge and top edge have been exposed to
the sun, but the bottom edge has been spared; so you get the original richness of the blue colour full throttle when you look at the bottom of the book. This edge treating is very striking indeed, an ostentatious and rather cheeky bit of decoration, which of course would only be seen when the book was taken from the shelf. When looking
at the leather decoration and edge decoration together, you are left wondering whether it makes for a coherent
and visually united whole. Though I'm sure that didn't concern the original client one bit.

About Me

Art and architectural historian and Anglican clergyman, Allan Barton obtained his MA in Medieval Studies and Ph.D in Art History at the University of York. He is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.